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Saturday, March 8, 2008

Ask me how much I hate research.

Anyone else so over winter? Sigh, anyway. More snow, which is crazy. But yesterday, it did a magical thing - snow just materialized. I don't know how it happened. I was waiting for a bus and out of nowhere snow just happened - it wasn't so much falling as it was blowing and swirling - some of the hugest, prettiest flakes ever. And, of course, it stopped as suddenly as it started.

Okay guys. Time to start working on this here B.A. I mean, I have been - as far as starting the lit review, subjects, methods, and problems with the study - but it needs fleshing out. I can't wait to not be researching anymore. I can't wait for that so much, I split an infinitive. That's right. As much as I love my boss and coworkers, I hate hate hate hate hate research. The only redeeming part about my lab is that it has direct potential implications for, say, police officer training. But other than that, it's like the way sports announcers say things like, "This left-handed catcher has the most right-handed throws to second base of anyone in the last five and a half years..." Either that, or something like, DID YOU KNOW THAT WHEN YOU'RE PRIMED WITH "OLD" YOU WILL BE MORE LIKELY TO THINK OF OLD PEOPLE! WHOA. Memory research is supposedly reasonable because of its meaning for eyewitness testimony. But what's going to come of the research? Juries instructed to disregard certain testimony? What are you going to do to help the witnesses? Juries don't listen to instructions anyway. They can't. You can't unring a bell, and you can't unhear something emotionally powerful. And research on economic trust, and cycles of interaction (just because Starkey Duncan was a great old man, wrote the book on interaction, and died the quarter after I took his class doesn't mean I have a different appreciation for the work), and ohhh language development. They don't mean much at all. At least, I can't see any practicality for them.

In discussion on Wednesday I got into a bizarre debate with a classmate about the necessity for motherese. I said that since motherese is inherently defined as the different way that adults address children, it will differ among cultures, but the simple fact that there's a difference is significant. And since it's universal according to this definition, it is necessary. He said it wasn't because he learned French without being motheresed. I think that was his argument. The discussion then descended into why we speak motherese to dogs, especially cute dogs, and interestingly, why we speak motherese to plants. See?! Vaguely, abstractly interesting, but it makes no fact in this life more or less probable. The jury's still out on whether I made a new friend or not. Sigh. Okay. Thesis time. Six more weeks-ish of working on it. I hope.